supplement · regulated markets
Supplement Brand Safety Checklist: 90 Minutes Before You Ship
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Loot Goblin Marketplace, a 165,000-subscriber YouTube channel, has run 75 paid Gamer Supps slots since November 2024 in our deal log. That is roughly one post every nine days. A founder messaged me last week. She wanted to hire the same channel for her own pre-workout brand. The 90-minute answer was no. The disclosure rate on those paid posts sits at 0.1% across 1,437 deals and 201 creators. A brand inheriting that audience inherits the next FTC sweep on the cohort.
That cohort rate is the single most important fact in any supplement audit. Most teams stop at the media-kit read. The teams that get sued stop there too.
Past-sponsor audit
What past sponsors on this creator's channel will kill my brand-safety review before contracting?
The past-sponsor audit is the bottleneck most supplement brands skip. It feels like agency work. The cost of skipping it is the Teami pattern. Teami is a wellness tea brand that paid $930,000 in FTC refunds in 2020. A paid creator the brand never vetted ended up the named witness in the FTC complaint. The brand paid the bill.
BigfryTV, a 344,000-subscriber gaming channel, has run 35 Gamer Supps slots since December 2025. Atozy, a 1.98M channel, has run 34 slots since January 2026. Joe Bartolozzi, a 4.33M channel, has run 28 slots since late December 2025. The cadence is two videos a week across the cohort.
The audit takes nine minutes per creator. Pull the last 30 paid posts. Sort by sponsor. Flag every supplement brand that overlaps with yours. Walk away from any creator whose past sponsor is in active FTC scrutiny.
Most teams under-spend on this step. Here is the past-sponsor audit we run on every supplement roster before outreach starts.
Past sponsors tell the truth.
Disclosure pattern
What disclosure rate on this creator's last 30 paid posts puts my brand in the FTC notice band?
The Federal Trade Commission updated 16 CFR Part 255 in 2023. The clear-and-conspicuous standard is the bar. A buried link-in-bio tag does not pass. A "#thanks" tag does not pass. A verbal mention at minute 12 of an 18-minute video does not pass.
The Gamer Supps cohort hits 0.1% across 1,437 paid slots. That is the FTC-notice band. The brand that buys from that cohort buys the pattern.
The AG1 podcast stack is the inverse. Andrew Huberman, a 7.39M-subscriber podcaster, has run 21 AG1 deals in our log. Tim Ferriss, a 1.75M-subscriber podcaster, has run 37 AG1 deals. Catherine Gregory, a wellness creator, has run 50 AG1 deals. Every host front-loads a verbal sponsor mention in the first 30 seconds. That is the 100% disclosure pattern at scale.
Would a supplement brand lose anything by walking away from a creator whose last 30 paid posts hit under 8%? The creator's upside on signups is real. The brand's downside is the Teami refund number. Bounded one way. Unbounded the other.
Worried your roster is sitting near the Gamer Supps cohort baseline? We pull every past sponsored post on every creator before outreach starts. We flag the disclosure pattern and surface the creators who already run at 100%. A 3-creator compliance-screened shortlist back in 14 to 21 days.
Send us your shortlist for a compliance pass →Audience age floor
Does this creator's audience break my minors-policy floor for a supplement product?
A pre-workout or fat-burner product carries a minors-policy floor. The category sets it. A brand contracting a creator whose top 1,000 commenters skew under 18 inherits the regulator's view that the marketing targets minors. Intent does not change the result.
The audience-age check takes 20 minutes. Pull the last six videos. Sample the top 100 comments per video. Score age signals. Username patterns. School references. Slang patterns. A score above 30% under-18 is a hard no.
The FDA structure/function claim rules apply at the brand level. The minors-policy floor stacks on top.
JamiUwU, a 590,000-subscriber channel, has run 20 Gamer Supps slots since November 2025. Anime Balls Deep, a 2.31M channel, has run 20 slots in the same window. Both skew young in the public-comment band. A pre-workout brand has to score audience age before signing.
Pre-claim review
Which claim language in this creator's past posts would my lawyer rewrite or kill?
The Teami brand paid the $930,000 refund because the creators used language the brand never pre-reviewed. Cure. Treat. Lose 10 pounds in two weeks. Doctor-recommended. The per-creator cost of avoiding that bill was a 20-minute pass on the draft script.
The FTC Health Products Compliance Guidance is the 2022 successor to the 1998 supplement guide. It covers every health-product claim. Pre-claim review reads the creator's last six supplement posts word by word. It flags every health claim. It rewrites or kills each one before the contract is signed.
A founder at Snap Supplements, a supplements brand for older men, said:
We need to partner with the right influencers to boost brand awareness and connect with our older male demographic effectively.
The "right" creator is the one whose past health claims will not put your brand in front of a federal complaint.
Layered on top is the platform-account history check. Two prior strikes on the supplement category puts the creator one shadow-ban away from disappearing mid-campaign with the brand's deposit.
- Rosters where the past-post disclosure rate sits near 0.1%
- Six-figure spend on creators whose last 20 videos carry no FTC tag
- Pre-workout briefs aimed at audiences that skew under the minors-policy floor
We're facing challenges engaging big influencers in Germany due to skepticism and the demand for scientific credibility in our products.— Tildy Hopkinson, JSHealth Vitamins · brand callGet a compliance-screened shortlist, free →
A founder at JSHealth Vitamins, a women's vitamin brand, named the same dynamic on a brand call. Scientific credibility is the bar. The creators who pass that bar are the same ones who treat disclosure as a basic line item. The two correlate.
The asymmetric bet
Which risk band does this creator fall into, and why is the 90-minute audit the highest-leverage thing I can do before content ships?
A brand we worked with last quarter ran the four-band sort on a 14-creator shortlist for a pre-workout launch. The sort produced three green, six yellow, four orange, and one red. They contracted the three green at full rate. They contracted the six yellow with a claim-language addendum and a 30-day disclosure-audit clause. They dropped the four orange to affiliate-only. They walked away from the one red. The launch shipped clean.
Magnus Midtbo, a 3.51M-subscriber climbing channel, has quoted $45,000 for one standard AG1 integration. Institute of Human Anatomy, an 8.75M-subscriber channel, has quoted $6,500 for one AG1 mid-roll slot. Pursuit of Wonder, a 3.42M-subscriber channel, has quoted $8,500 for one 60 to 90 second AG1 integration. The brands paying top-of-market for slots also get top-of-market disclosure discipline as a side effect.
The 199-creator long-tail at 0.1% gets the opposite.
Bounded downside on a 90-minute audit is 90 minutes of analyst time the brand was going to spend anyway. Unbounded upside is staying off the FTC's next supplement sweep. That is the same trade the Teami brand declined in the 2018-2020 window. Teami paid $930,000 to learn it after the fact.
Most supplement teams over-spend on creator fees and under-spend on the 30-minute compliance pass. Here is the per-creator audit grid we hand brands before brief stage.
The math is one-sided.
FAQ
What's the one check that catches most brand-safety problems on a supplement creator?
The past-sponsor audit. Pull the creator's last 30 paid posts and check the disclosure rate. Gamer Supps sits at a 0.1% disclosure rate across 1,437 deals on 201 creators in our database. A brand inheriting that audience inherits the next FTC sweep that targets the cohort.
How long does a supplement brand-safety audit actually take per creator?
Ninety minutes per candidate covers all five layers. Past sponsors, disclosure rate, audience age band, claim language, and account flags. The cost of skipping it is the Teami pattern. Teami paid $930,000 in FTC refunds in 2020. One analyst-hour beats a federal complaint.
What disclosure rate is the brand-safety floor for a supplement creator?
Anything under 8% is the FTC-notice band. The Gamer Supps cohort at 0.1% is the cautionary tale. The AG1 podcast stack is the safe pattern. Athletic Greens pays around $2.2M a month into podcast sponsorships where every host names the sponsor in the first 30 seconds. That is what 100% looks like at scale.
Where We Come In
We run the full five-layer audit on every name a supplement brand sends us. The past-sponsor history, disclosure rates, audience age bands, claim-language patterns, and account flags for every creator worth looking at already live in our database. The 1,437 Gamer Supps deals across 201 creators. The AG1 podcast stack at roughly $2.2M a month. The Teami enforcement record. The bounded downside is one analyst-hour per candidate. The unbounded upside is staying off the supplement category's next FTC sweep instead of being its $930,000 lesson.
We do the audit for you because the audit is the work that distinguishes a hand-vetted roster from a scraped one. Send us your shortlist for the five-layer check before the first brief goes out.
Vetting is the moat.
Reading loop
Frequently asked
What's the one check that catches most brand-safety problems on a supplement creator?
The past-sponsor audit. Pull the creator's last 30 paid posts and check the disclosure rate. Gamer Supps, a gaming-focused energy supplement brand, sits at a 0.1% disclosure rate across 1,437 deals on 201 creators in our database. A brand inheriting that audience inherits the next FTC sweep.
How long does a supplement brand-safety audit actually take per creator?
Ninety minutes per candidate covers all five layers. Past sponsors, disclosure rate, audience age band, claim language, and account flags. The cost of skipping it is the Teami pattern. Teami is a wellness tea brand that paid $930,000 in FTC refunds in 2020. One analyst-hour beats a federal complaint.
What disclosure rate is the brand-safety floor for a supplement creator?
Anything under 8% is the FTC-notice band. The Gamer Supps cohort at 0.1% is the cautionary tale. The AG1 podcast stack is the safe pattern. Athletic Greens pays around $2.2M a month into podcast sponsorships where every host names the sponsor in the first 30 seconds. That is what 100% looks like at scale.
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